One of the most common and important uses of technical writing is instructions—those step-by-step explanations of how to do things: assemble something, operate something, repair something, or do routine maintenance on something. Although this might sound simple, writing a clear, easy-to-understand set of instructions requires attention to detail and careful crafting of sentences. Instructions are often some of the worst-written documents you can find. Like almost every consumer in the developed world, you’ve probably had infuriating experiences with badly-written instructions.

Writing clear, user-friendly instructions is challenging. (Ikea Parody as a Birthday Present by Daniel is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Ultimately, good instruction writing requires:

• Clear, simple writing
• A thorough understanding of the procedure in all its technical detail
• Awareness of audience and purpose
• The ability to put yourself in the place of the person who will use your instructions
• The ability to visualize the procedure in great detail and write a step-by-step analysis of the procedure
• Willingness to test your instructions on the kind of person you wrote them for

This chapter will show you what professionals consider to be the best instruction-writing techniques.